


All we ever have

by Hecate



Category: Chicago Fire
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 23:38:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she leaves, he watches her. Thinks, <i>I want to kiss her again</i>, and looks away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All we ever have

He calls Severide because he has to tell somebody, has to say the words out loud to somebody who understands the enormity of what happened.

"Heather kissed me," he says, breathes into the silence before he goes on, "I kissed her back."

The moment stretches like a rubber band, snaps into pieces just when the tension becomes too much.

"Goddamnit, Casey," Severide growls. "She's Andy's wife."

_She was_ , he almost says. But he can't, because Andy is dead and he's not ready to fill up everything he says about him with past tenses.

"I know," he answers and waits for Severide to go on, to tell him what to do. But Severide doesn't, and Matt tells him goodbye because silence between them has always been too much to bear.

*

"We need to talk," Heather tells him on the phone a few days later.

"Yeah," he answers, and he thinks of her lips against his.

*

They meet in a park. She brings him coffee. 

"Hi," he greets her, forcing a smile to his face.

"Hi," she repeats. Her smile looks like his own feels to him, nervous and fake, lasting too long to be real.

They don't hug.

She doesn't say anything for a while and when she finally speaks, her words and voice are stiff: "I shouldn't have. I wanted to, but I shouldn't have."

It's not an apology. He's glad for that.

When she leaves, he watches her. Thinks, _I want to kiss her again_ , and looks away.

*

Severide stares at him with hard eyes when he comes to work, and it reminds Matt of the months after Andy's death.

But he doesn't ask about Heather. He doesn't talk to Matt at all.

Matt lets him be. When Boden comes to speak to him, he promises that this silence won't last. He hopes it isn't a lie.

*

"Let’s go to the movies together," she says, and Matt's tightens his grip on the phone. "I need to go out more."

"Okay," he answers.

She laughs. He thinks she heard the tension in his voice. "Don't worry, I won't kiss you again."

He forces a chuckle and doesn't tell her that maybe he wouldn't mind. "I'll pick you up."

"Thank you, Matt." 

She is the only one who ever calls him Matt. He's Casey for everybody else. He still remembers how long it took him to get used to that, not to say "That's my mother's name" every time he heard it. 

And it wasn't true anyway. It was his father's.

*

They watch an action movie with car crashes and explosions. It's loud and fast and filled with one-liners that make Heather laugh.

When a fire breaks out on the movie screen, their hands touch.

*

"Can you get the kids for me? I'm stuck at work and my parents left town a few weeks ago," she asks.

He hears what she doesn't say: _They left because they think I'm okay now. But I'm not sure I am._ He hears because he feels the same, about Andy, about his mother. 

"Yeah," he says.

The kids come running to him when they see him, and they tell him about their day and all the things Andy was supposed to hear.

*

She visits him at the firehouse once, walks through the rooms and halls, greets the other men.

"Just to prove I can," she tells him, drinking coffee at the table where Andy used to sit. It hurts to see her there.

"How do you feel?"

She shrugs. "Horrible, I think."

He's glad she doesn't try to smile.

"Is that a new thing?" Severide asks after she left, and Matt looks at him, confused. "You and Heather. Is that a new thing? Or did it start before Andy died?"

Matt almost punches him. Instead, he walks away.

*

The phone wakes him in the middle of the night, and he knows it's her before he even hears her voice.

"I dreamt of Andy," she says.

He thinks of all the times he did the same, thinks of Andy burning again and again. Wishes she wouldn't have to dream like this, trapped in a nightmare without Andy by her side.

"He kept switching into you. And I feel so fucking guilty about it and so relieved." She laughs, bitter, frail. And he wants to be with her then, wants to pull her close, kiss her and swallow the sounds.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"I know," she answers. "Everybody is."

*

"Roof is leaking. Help?" the first text reads. "I got beer and pizza," the second.

Matt grins, sends back, "I'll be there after work."

When he looks up, Severide is watching him.

*

The house used to be filled with pictures of Andy. Andy and Heather, Andy and the children, Andy alone in his uniform. The pictures are gone now, the walls strangely blank.

Matt can't help but stare.

When he hears Heather coming in, he turns to her, trying to pretend everything is fine, everything is okay.

She hands him a beer. Smiles. "Sorry for asking your help all the time. I know it's a bit much and..."

He stops her. "It's okay, Heather." 

Another smile, this one more careful. She points at the wall where the pictures used to hang, a gallery of happiness.

"It looks strange, doesn't it?"

He nods.

"I guess new beginnings usually do." 

*

"She's Andy's wife," Severide says again, and he sounds so fucking angry. "You need to stay away from her."

"Why?" Matt asks, the words spilling out before he can stop himself, and Severide stares at him.

"Because it's disrespectful," he answers, voice solid and sure, words made of stone. "He deserves better than this."

_But Andy is dead_ , Casey thinks, _and Heather isn't_. She's alive and warm and beautiful, and she doesn't deserve to be buried along with Andrew.

*

It's him who calls this time.

"I want to see you," he says. "I need to see you."

"Yeah," is all she says, an answer big enough for the both of them, for everything they could be.

*

He kisses her after she closed the door behind him, kisses her and doesn't want to stop. But he has to.

"The kids..." he starts.

She shakes her head. "Asleep."

"But..."

"No," she goes on, "no." And she pulls him in again, pulls him against her body. And he falls against the warmth of her, solid and grounded, and he follows her as she pulls him into her bedroom.

He stops in the middle of it. Stares at the bed, thinks of Andy, thinks of Severide. Only looks away as she leans against him.

"I threw out the bed. It's the first thing I did after … I threw out the bed."

He nods. Still. "It was his bedroom."

"Yes," she answers. "Now it's only mine."

"Okay," he answers, lies; and he kisses her. "Okay," he repeats, and he pulls his shirt off, watches as she does the same. And he kisses her, kisses her, kisses her. 

He feels her smile against his lips. And he wonders, as he pushes her onto the bed, if they're falling in love or falling from grace. 

*

He wakes up before the sun rises and he turns to watch Heather sleep, the city lights coming through the window, painting everything in pale colors. She looks almost at peace.

*

"I'm not sure if I love you," he says to her during breakfast, and he knows that he doesn't. But the truth is too cruel, isn't allowed, not when it comes to Heather. She lost too much, and he refuses to add to that, to take more than she can bear to lose.

When he looks at her, she smiles. It's not happy. It's not sad either. It's just a curve on the lips he kissed before, and he thinks he wants to kiss her again.

"Matt, I don't want the grand romance. I had that, he died. I just..." She stops there, looks away from him. "I don't want to be lonely. I want somebody who sits with me at the breakfast table, someone to fight over the TV with, someone who steals the blankets at night."

She shrugs.

"I probably shouldn't expect this from you. And I think I don't. You're … you can still have it, you can still fall in love with a woman that's just perfect for you. You probably will. But as long as you haven't found her, you could be with me."

Heather smiles then, and Matt's heart breaks for her all over again.

"That's not fair. You deserve better than that, you deserve..."

"I'm using you, Matt. So I guess I deserve exactly that."

He shakes his head, not entirely sure what he's disagreeing with, and reaches out for her. She lets him. Of course she does.

"Heather," he begins, and stops. He doesn't know what to say to her, not even after last night. 

"It's okay if you want to leave," she says after a while.

He shakes his head. But he still doesn't know what to say.

"Listen," she goes on, "this isn't going to change. I won't stop being me, Andy won't stop being dead. This won't be a happy end. But maybe things will be okay at some point. Maybe we will be. But there's no guarantee for that. And if you can't deal with that, you should leave. And I won't hate you for that."

She grins. "Not much, anyway."

And he laughs, has to, because they survived Andy's death for now, because he still can. And because Heather is smiling.

*

He stays.

_The past is a ghost, the future a dream, and all we ever have is now.  
Bill Cosby_

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not mine, no money made.


End file.
